


Day 2: Gardening – Night Garden

by 221b_hound



Series: Techienician: Botanical Love [3]
Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 30 Days of Techienician, 30-Day Fic Meme, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Techienician
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 12:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7933867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Finalizer is a warship without a war. Instead, it houses a peace garden. Phasma likes to visit it at night. This night, she finds two men there, who don't know how to garden but are planting seeds all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 2: Gardening – Night Garden

The Finalizer used to be a warship, but the war failed to eventuate. Supreme Leader Snoke met an ignominious end at the hands of a protective father who most definitely shot first, and like a house of cards, fate’s chain of events fell and scattered. The reviled Brendol Hux fled like a coward, abandoning even his family, and died – and a future that held the deaths of many suns and many worlds became instead a future of a cautious and hopeful truce. The New Republic and the remnants of the Empire called the First Order found a way to cohabit the vast galaxies.

Now they bump along, wary and watchful but carefully tolerant of one another.

The Finalizer is a ship that maintains the peace, now, with its New Republic counterpart the Amidala. The leaders sometimes meet on board one or the other, or on stations. In the name of intergalactic relations and grassroots diplomacy, sometimes, they offer each other odd gifts.

General Phasma’s favourite gift, ship-to-ship, are the Peace Gardens. On the Amidala, a chamber once used for war meetings has been filled with earth and trellises and it grows flowers and fruit vines. On the Finalizer, a vast third level storage bay that was once filled with bombs and canisters of acidic gas is a vegetable garden. She likes her nature to be practical and healthful. Her troopers (the storm has been levered off the front of that moniker, since there’s no storming to be done right now) work the plots. It’s not a punishment detail – it’s a reward.

Weirdly enough, it works as an incentive. Her troops work hard for the privilege of spending time with their hands in the earth and the scent of growing things.

Techie and Matt are good at their jobs, but they’re not the sort of people that get noticed. Techie is kind of a genius, actually, but he works on staying hidden. Being noticed for his brilliance led to slavery, blinding and tech replacements, once upon a time. Matt is a very good technician, but he’s not good at getting on with his colleagues, who see his slow methodical approach as lazy or dim instead of thorough, and who too easily goad him to frustrated temper.

This means that although Matt loves the garden and visits when he can during lunch and dinner breaks, and Techie loves to go with Matt and see Matt’s face go serene, they never get to actually work in the garden.

But Matt and Techie are used to being overlooked by their seniors, so they make their own arrangements for garden privileges. They sneak in at the dead of the night shift, which is not forbidden, precisely, but it’s not exactly an open invitation either.  

Matt loves the garden. He likes the reminder of the park he grew up with. Techie is endlessly fascinated because he never saw a garden in his life. He sits with fistfuls of soil and leaves, sniffing them, watching Matt, who doesn’t really weed or garden. He doesn’t know how to do those things. Matt rakes his fingers through the earth. From time to time, his face melts into a happy, blissful smile at Techie.

Matt and Techie are only pretend farmers – yet they are gardeners all the same. Neither knows that they are planting and nurturing and growing other things, little seeds inside themselves, twin vines that grow green and flourishing in their hearts and souls. They are themselves seedlings, putting down roots in one another’s hearts, and reaching out to the sun they find in each other.


End file.
